A Haunting Past
by Dara Tavar
Summary: Chel wants to leave the only place she's ever know, the only home she's ever lived in: El Dorado. Something in her past frightens her, scares her enough to make her want to run away with two men that she knows nothing about. With her past haunting her, she'll need to trust these strangers...but what sort of past is it that has her frightened enough to trust these two con men?


**Okay, so this is my first El Dorado story. I know I have one (maybe two, but I don't remember right now) planned for the future. This is just a quick idea I got last night while watching the movie with my niece and decided to write it out before I forgot it once she fell asleep. Well, I don't really have anything else to say, I just wanted to upload it real quick. Enjoy!**_  
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**Escape From El Dorado**

"Why?" Tulio asked suspiciously.

"So I can get out," she told him simply, as if he should have known it already. She gave him a look that said she obviously thought he was crazy for not have already put that together.

"I thought she just said she wanted in?" Miguel asked in confusion, looking to Tulio for an explanation.

"She wants in so she can get out," he explained in return as he stepped down from the chair they'd jumped up on when Chel had come in, as though he were explaining something complicated to a child.

"Aha!" Miguel exclaimed with a smile, stepping down after her partner in crime. "Got it," he continued on with a chuckle. He started to walk past Tulio, only to stop suddenly and turn back to Chel with a confused expression again. "W—why?" he asked her.

Chel scoffed in response to his question. "Think you're the only ones who dream of better things?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest as she arched an eyebrow at him. "Of adventure?" Her mind drifted back to a time before they waltzed into her life and offered her a chance to get away from this place and the horrors that went along with it…

Chel had spent most of her life completely unaware of who her father was. Her mother had come from outside El Dorado, apparently met her father and thought she'd fallen in love with a caring man, only to find out he was some sort of monster (really, Chel could only guess at that because her mother had never come out and said the words herself), only to have a child and be forced to remain in the city her husband called home.

Her mother, having come from the outside world, had raised Chel with a knowledge that others in El Dorado never dreamed of. But because her mother was from the outside, the two were never really accepted into the people of El Dorado, instead living apart from them and striving to enter into as little social interactions with the others as possible. It was because of this that neither woman had any friends, and neither had any love interest, despite their striking looks.

Chel's mother had passed on her knowledge to her daughter, and so the girl knew about worldly things, such as the value of gold to a person on the outside. She'd been taught that the gods her fellow El Doradoans believed in weren't real, and she'd been taught her mother's faith instead. She'd also heard about the miraculous things, the adventures, one could have if only they were on the outside. And Chel wanted to be a part of it, only she didn't want to leave her mother behind. The woman was the only family Chel had ever known, her only true friend, and she wasn't willing to just up and leave without her.

On several occasions, Chel had asked her mother why she didn't just leave, but the response she got was always the same: "I can't." For years Chel hadn't understood what her mother had meant by those simple words, but she eventually found out.

One night, Chel finally convinced her mother to escape with her. They grabbed some gold trinkets, stashed away some food, and began their journey to the outside world. Before they even got halfway through the cave, Chel's mother had suddenly dropped to the ground in pain. She could barely move.

She'd stared up at her daughter with horror in her eyes and had urged her to continue on. "Run. Get as far away from here as you can. Go!"

"No, I won't leave without you, Mama," Chel had vowed, dropping to the ground at her mother's side. She left everything there and had tried to hold on to her mother, tried to do anything she possibly could to carry her mother on their journey, but the older woman was just in too much pain. She would cry out with everything that Chel tried to do.

A moment later, guards had appeared behind them.

"Run!" her mother had screamed in panic, tears rolling down her face, but Chel wouldn't budge. The men had caught them and taken them back into the city, taking Chel to the little home she'd lived in her whole life, and her mother somewhere else. Chel had never seen her mother alive again. She'd been told that, because of the woman's disobedience and breaking her promise to her husband so many years before, she'd been offered up as a sacrifice.

Cold fear had gripped Chel at that moment, hoping and wishing that her father wasn't who she was thinking of. She'd been told later that she was forbidden to leave, that her father had given specific orders that she had to stay in El Dorado. While he'd never been present in her life, he'd always been keeping an eye on her, looking for any sign that she might follow in his footsteps. Should she try to leave, her father might very well kill her the same way he'd killed her mother.

A week later, the man himself had shown up on her doorstep, excitement in his crazed eyes as he laughed gleefully. "You have the power," he whispered to her, holding out a hand as green mist slid out from his fingers and turned the room around her alive with dreadful creatures. She knew it was only an illusion he created, but it frightened her none-the-less. And it was in that moment that she hated herself, merely because she knew that she'd come from the man before her.

"You have the power," he repeated, slipping closer to her. "Will some training and careful guidance, you could be as powerful as I am. And together, we could rule over these insignificant worms, like the gods. The two of us, father and daughter, working as one. Can you imagine it?"

Chel had shuddered, backing away from him. "My mother never told me about you, and I know why. There's…there's something wrong with you," she whispered in return, feeling the same horror welling up inside her that she'd seen in her mother's eyes when they'd tried to escape.

"You're mother," he sneered, making a fist as the illusions around her disappeared. "My wife couldn't see the potential. She decided to leave me, though I made her swear to never leave the city. I knew she was carrying you, and I knew that one day you might inherit my powers. I just couldn't let her leave with you. And now, I'm not going to let you leave either."

Chel backed into the wall when he stepped closer to her, cringing away from him. The man might have been her father, but he scared her half to death. She couldn't understand how her mother might have found herself in love with the dreadful man, but she could see quite clearly why she'd left him. And why she'd been afraid to leave.

"You'll see my point one day, and then you'll come to me," he swore, glaring at her with his crazy eyes. "After all, you are my daughter, and my blood runs through your veins. The power, everything, is inside you. All you have to do is find it, and then you'll see that your place is at my side."

Chel had remained where she was until a long time after he'd gone. But once she'd been able to move, she'd set to righting and cleaning her home, as if he'd defiled it with his mere presence. She vowed to herself to never give in to the darkness inside her, the part that she knew had come from him. Because she knew it was in there, had felt it welling up inside her on several occasions when she'd grown mad or had been hurt. She knew she had the potential to be like him, to be evil, but she also knew she could just as easily choose to be like her mother, pure and sweet. She would do everything in her power to keep from becoming like him.

That was the night when Chel had made a pack with herself. She would escape from El Dorado, she would escape from her father, and she would live her life in the outside world as her mother would have wanted her too.

And so that was why, when Miguel and Tulio had seemed to fall into her lap, overhearing their plans to take the gold from El Dorado and escape to the outside world she'd always dreamed of…she was determined to get them to take her along. But that didn't mean that she had to tell them about her life…or her family and why she wanted to get out of El Dorado…

She drew herself back to the present, seeing the two men still staring at her, waiting for her to finish whatever she been saying. "You've got your reasons…" she trailed off for a moment, looking away from them as she fought a shudder. She couldn't give too much away to these men, couldn't spill her whole, sordid life on them. No, she would keep all those nightmares from the past to herself, least these two men decide not helping her would be better than helping her. "And I've got mine," she finished quickly. "Let's not make it personal, okay?" she said, hoping they wouldn't ask too many questions.

She didn't want them knowing anything about her, and she would have to be careful not to let her father become aware of her plans, because if he ever found out…well, Tzekel-Kan was a crazy man and he would be a formidable foe. Chel just needed to find a way to keep him from finding out about her new partnership with Tulio and Miguel, and the two of them from finding out about Tzekel-Kan being her father and powerful enough to kill people without being anywhere near them.


End file.
